


Heaven In Triplicate

by MiyabiDreams



Series: Elysia [5]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Commander Shepard's Family, F/M, Family Member Death, Grief/Mourning, Reminiscing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 09:36:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3891436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiyabiDreams/pseuds/MiyabiDreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joker and Elysia discuss her family a little bit. Also, space hamster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heaven In Triplicate

When he got the invitation to meet the Commander up in her quarters, Joker was surprised. They hadn't even been off of Illium for a full twelve hours yet, and regardless, he never seemed to get invited anywhere, everyone pussyfooting around the idea that he could step wrong and do himself some grievous bodily harm. They were careful around him. It had passed beyond infuriating and rested firmly in exhausting.

Not her, though. She took him seriously, ribbed and gave as good as she got, keeping them on equal footing in spite of repeated assertions that she was supposed to be the commanding officer. Nevermind being the Citadel Council and Admiral Hackett's go-to for all the high-risk missions and the little step-and-fetchit errands. She always seemed to make time to give him hell, or offer words or an ear. Not that he really ever took her up on the offer. After all, she wasn't a therapist and he wasn't inclined to go spilling his guts to anyone, even someone he considered a friend. More, in fact, though that had been a long time ago.

"Hey," he started as soon as Shepard's cabin door plinked and hissed open. He barely paused at the sight of her seated in the middle of her bed, cross-legged in an off-white tanktop and dark blue briefs, completely unashamed as she was looked over, then approached. She seemed preoccupied with the tiny animal in her hands that meeped at Joker when he sidled his way down the steps. "You wanted to see me, Commander?"

"Don't I always?" When she looked up at him, her smile was tired, barely there. She looked like she'd been through hell, and those scars on her face that he could see the glowing cybernetics through certainly lent to that impression.

"Well yeah, but usually you come to me. And didn't you say you'd think about walking around in your undies more often?"

"I would, but Chambers won't stop eyeballing me when I go down in anything less than full blues. I don't have anything against her, but she's a little..."

"Yeah ok I get it." Joker lifted his hands, shaking his head and slowly easing himself to sit on the end of the bed. "I'd be flattered, personally, but then again I'm not the subject of constant ogling. Haven't you told her to lay off?"

Shepard sighed and rubbed her free hand down the side of her face. "I would, and believe me, I've wanted to ask her to stop talking to me, stop telling me when I have messages like I don't check them every time I go by the galaxy map, just _stop_ telling me things, but I just...I don't have the heart."

"And yet you can mouth off to Garrus whenever he starts getting up in arms about killing his own dudes."

"That was different and you know it," Shepard huffed and flopped back, letting her little hamster pet trundle around on her stomach instead. "Anyway, I can deal with a cranky hellbent turian better than I can a bouncy, too-eager ensign. She's got a lot of love for everyone, I just wish she wouldn't direct it at me. Maybe Liara...she could use a cute girl to do...whatever she wants to do with." She glanced down when the hamster climbed down off of her and started up Joker's leg instead, prompting a startled 'hey!' when it started to chew on a fold of his shirt. "Aw, he likes you."

"So you have things in common with your rodent," Joker teased. He scooted back a little further onto the bed, noting that it was more comfortable than Shepard's bed on the original Normandy. He let himself very carefully slouch over onto his side, taking his hat off and laying it on his chest. The hole in the back was promptly used as a portal by an eager little pet. Joker looked down at it and rolled his eyes. He glanced over at Shepard and put his hands up when she gave him that Look, the one that warned him against moving or doing much of anything.

"So really, Lys," he started carefully, looking up at Shepard with a more subdued expression, "why did you call me up? You don't look like you're doing so hot."

"Joker, don't-"

"No, you don't get to tell me to 'don't', not after everything else. Not after Cerberus, not after everything we've seen. _Talk_ to me."

That look on Joker's face was rare, and it made Shepard reel back from the immediate fire that was about to launch into every word. She deflated a little bit, wrapping her arms across her middle and looking up at the smooth metal overhead. He was almost startled when she sat up suddenly and very carefully untucked, unwound, then took off the wrapping around her head. It was surreal; the only time he could recall ever seeing her head uncovered previously, it was the night before they were supposed to hit the Mu relay and drop onto Ilos. His memories of that night were almost too clear, too vivid. They had stripped down to nothing, then simply...stopped. They'd looked eachother in the eye, completely bared to one-another, their scars laid out in the open, and then he had laid down beside her, his arm wrapped around her, his fingers grazing over the warm skin of her side, his cheek resting on her head, course stubble against the almost velveteen softness of her close-cropped hair.

They'd talked the entire night, huddled together under the slightly coarse Alliance-issue blankets, and he'd learned all about her family. Shepard's parents had been homesteaders on Mindoir, old souls that left Earth behind in search of new horizons, hoping to expand their view of the universe. They'd had four daughters, three of whom were triplets. Elysia was the middle child of those three, she'd said. Nirvana was the first, the brightest of them, beautiful and vain and courageous to a fault. She had gone up that rocks face that had scarred Shepard's face, encouraging her to follow after. It had been the same way with the Alliance; Nirvana had joined up the day she was old enough to do so, and her sister had followed close behind her. Arcadia was the third, the quietest, in love with books and knowledge. She had always talked about leaving the colony and going out in search of the Prothean ruins littered throughout the galaxy. She just _had_ to find one of those peculiar silver spheres, said that they contained untold millenia's knowledge, that she was determined to put one behind glass, preserve it for the next generations of curious minds.

Then, there had been the baby sister. It had brought tears to Shepard's eyes as she'd spoken of Nairobi, where the others in the set of triplets had made her smile. The wild child, Elysia had called her. Frustrated at the idea of being in the shadow of three prodigies, she had acted out, getting in trouble wherever she could, dating what her parents deemed _the wrong people_. She had eventually gone offworld, hopping from planet to planet when money would permit. Shepard confessed that it was with her help; she might have gathered massive amounts of credits over the course of her career with the Alliance, with how meagerly she tended to live thanks to her training and postings, but every spare credit had gone toward that one wayward sister, enabling her to go wherever she wanted to. It came back around in the form of messages and vid mails, and it was clear that she adored her wild child sister.

According to Shepard, Arcadia had been killed along with their parents when the Batarian slavers attacked their colony. The little singing sphere resting on her cabin's coffee table was a monument to her, Shepard claimed when she'd brought it on board the new Normandy. Nairobi was somewhere on Illium. Of course, Joker knew that; he'd been the one that had found her in Shepard's contacts and alerted her to the death of her older sister. He hadn't received a reply for months, and then suddenly, while in the middle of a bout of drunken reminiscing about his time with the great and illustrious Commander Shepard at a bar on the Citadel, he'd been approached by a girl with long bronze-colored hair tied into a braid, and he'd nearly had a heart attack; she'd looked exactly like the Commander, from the grey-blue eyes to the shape of her mouth, the slight hook of her nose... Joker was certain that she was just a figment of his imagination, until she'd spoken. Her voice was higher, more raspy than Elysia's, and she looked even more intense than the Commander had the last time he'd seen her. She'd shaken his hand, thanked him for taking care of her sister, bought him a drink, and then left him both bewildered and grief stricken.

"Nairobi is missing," Shepard murmured, her eyes closing and her jaw clenching. Joker could tell that the dam keeping her emotions carefully maintained was straining. "The last I was able to find, she had gone to Omega. She went with some mercenaries... Eclipse, I think. I think... I-I think..."

Joker hushed her before the break happened, turning carefully to wrap his arm around her shoulders. Her face tucked against his arm as she gave a quiet, shuddering little sigh, sniffing hard and curling up there at his side. "You don't know that she was one of them, Lys. There are a lot of girls in Eclipse, a lot of angry girls with tech and guns that were shooting at you. Don't you think if she was sent after you that she'd hang back? She could have...I don't know, called in sick when the orders were handed down to stop you."

"Joker, she doesn't even know I'm _alive_. Vana doesn't either. For all SHE knows, she could be the only Shepard left. I'm being kept a secret from one sister, I'm pretty fucking sure I killed the other one, and I've already been told not to try and contact either one of them to be sure! If Vana knew what I was pigeonholed into...God, she'd never talk to me again..."

"Fuck protocol, your sisters should know you're alive. Pull your resources, demand that Aria help you find Nairobi. She owes you that much after how much of her shit you've straightened out while she sat in her stupid lounge," Joker argued, bumping the top of her head with his chin to get her to look up at him. "And I'm damn sure that Anderson will get the word out to Nirvana. He adores you, you know that."

"Fuck off with your stupid...being right and...supportive and shit. I didn't sign off on this," Shepard grumbled and rubbed her face against his shoulder.

"Ok first off, you totally did the moment you kissed me the first time, and second, would you stop rubbing snot on my uniform? Gross, Commander."

"And fuck you for that too, I am not rubbing snot on anything. Besides, you kissed me first."

"And just how do you figure that?" Joker asked with a scoff, propping himself up on his elbow and urging her off of him. "Because I seem to recall you hanging all over my seat pestering me to come and drink with you because you'd found some whiskey stashed in your equipment locker."

"Yes but I didn't kiss you until about five glasses later."

"So you do admit that you started it."

"...you set me up, Moreau. That's playing dirty."

"I think I'll tell your sisters on you for flirting with your Flight Lieutenant," he added, taking his hat off of the hamster that had settled in to snooze on his stomach and putting it on Shepard's head instead. It was too large for her, sitting crooked on her head and covering her eyes with the brim when she lifted back up to face him. "That's a good look for you. Maybe we should get you a hat of your own."

"Oh stow it. Go back to flirting with the AI s I can tell Vana that you're having an affair with the ship," Shepard shot back, sitting up and wiping her fingers under her eyes, grimacing at the tiny smudges of eyeliner. She never wore more than a little bit of eye makeup and lip balm, and she was still irritated at the traces of grey on her fingertips. She sighed when a hand wrapped around hers and lowered it, frowning when the backs of her fingers were pressed to his lips. "Jeff, we talked about this."

"One for the road, then I'll never do it again, I promise."

"That's what you said the day we decided we worked better as friends," she pointed out, shaking her head and taking the hat back off, replacing it on Joker's head then leaning down and pressing her lips to the corner of his mouth. He shifted just enough to catch her full-on, then laid back with a grin, his arms behind his head. She smacked him in the side of the head, then laid back down at his side, on her back with her eyes on the metal over their heads.

The hamster had crawled into the folds of the blanket when the two of them just wouldn't stop shifting around and was chewing steadily through the outer layer of material. There wouldn't even be a blanket left by the time they faced the Collectors at this rate.


End file.
